Favorite neglected-and-rediscovered kitchen utensil of last year: Rubber spatulas.
Written 4/15/10
March 31, 2010
[thirtieth]
Echk, I can't get over how semi-gross this picture looks. Despite my cake disaster from the day before, I swallowed any fears of the kitchen and stepped back into experiment in cooking. I prepared chicken in a sour cream sauce with capers. My version wasn't much to write home about, but a coworker gave me another recipe that involves lots of dijon mustard, so I may have to try making it again.
Written on 4/15/10
[twenty ninth]
Oh, this brings back such discouraging and hilarious memories. I was psyched all day to be making a pineapple upside down cake in the the evening. Why? Why not! It's such an easy dessert if you just use a yellow cake mix and the flipping element is totally awesome. I even went a step further with this cake - I cut up the pineapple rings into fourths and made a flower blossoming design in the warm caramel topping. I was even playing Hawaiian music during this cake's preparation.
I foolishly used my spring form pan thinking it would make it easier to release the cake. This only caused some of the caramel topping to spill out from the pan, so I put a baking sheet under the spring form to catch the topping during the baking process. When the oven timer dinged, I grabbed one side of the baking sheet with one oven mitt and watched in horror as the cake slid in the opposite direction and spill its undone bits all over the 325 degree heating coils. Smoke started to billow up, the smell of burning sugar filled my kitchen and my hopes for a cute dessert were popped.
B and I managed to salvage some of the batter and, after cleaning the coils, tried to rebake the remains. We managed to get something that slightly resembled a cake out of our efforts. To mask it's sad appearance we piled our servings with mounds of ice cream. I have never felt so sick from sugar after that dessert. Worst part was that we had to eat the cake right-side-up.
Written on 4/15/10
[twenty fifth]
A gift from my wonderful supervisor: Thin shortbread-like cookies with a white chocolate filling.
Written 4/15/10
March 23, 2010
[twenty second]
I took a sick day and made friends with my bed, television, and laptop. I decided to relax with a movie on netflix streaming and picked The Proposal. I'm usually a sucker for any rom com, but for some reason, The Proposal didn't grab my attention. I gave in though and was plesantly surprised! It was enjoyable. Here's Betty White and Sandra Bullock doing a rap-inspired tribal dance.
[twentieth]
Ok, this is where I admit it: I forgot to take a picture on March 20th :( And this picture is a visual representation of what I heard in my head once I realized this screw up in the middle of the night. But! I'm cutting myself some slack because there was a lot going on that day and on top of that I was battling the beginnings of a nasty headcold. Oh well, we all have our slip ups.
[nineteenth]
My current read: Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I've read it before and really enjoyed it, but decided to read it again to listen to it more carefully. I was disappointed to hear a movie was being made of the book, but after forcing myself to watch a trailer, I am actually rather intrigued in the adaptation.
Also....loving Ryan Adams and Florence + The Machine in the trailer
[eighteenth]
Poorest beginning to any Jeopardy (in this case, Celebrity Jeopardy) ever! Anderson Cooper, COME ON!
[thirteenth]
J's mocha. This was enjoyed after good conversations and spilling half of my sandwich on the floor....but it was on the "clean" part of the floor....so I still ate it.
March 10, 2010
[ninth]
On TV, a man was stopping people to ask what was in their wallets or purses. Instead of that, I took my own spin on things and am showing you the contents of my fridge -- I've been wanting to take this photo for a while, but kept forgetting. In the freezer, there are more english muffins than one person should have and neglected ice trays. In the fridge, there's a huge block of feta cheese on the top shelf, along with salsa and spaghetti sauce. On the second shelf, you've got your Thin Mints, Crisco, and butter -- I like to call that my healthy shelf. On the bottom, there's the Brita, capers from a few nights ago and some hummus.
March 9, 2010
[seventh]
Went to the zoo with good friends Jandy today :) It was a bit chilly out and we got there right when the park opened. Contrary to some information that animals are more active in the morning and the cold, we saw a very sleepy wild kingdom. Sleepy gorillas, tired hippos, snoring tigers. The river otters, giraffe, and penguins were active and entertaining though.
This mountain goat was like 60% Donald Sutherland.
We went into the budgie house full of budgies, gray and white cockatiels, and colorfol parrots. At one point, a bunch of the birds started flying in a united swarm around the room and I was sure I'd be pooped on - but I was lucky.
We also went into a tropical house full of plants and exotic birds. I was so happy there were several warm exhibits to walk into because I was feeling like a popsicle outside - A's glasses can atest to the temperature change inside! I think the bird portion of this house was my favorite place -- it was warm, filled with foliage and you really felt like you were in the rainforest canopy. The birds aren't overly squaky and they're harder to spot. When you do see one, it's amazing to know such color combinations exist in nature.
[sixth]
This meal might have blew my mind even further (bigger? more messily?...I'm not sure how to appropriately exaggerate a mind blow here). B made pizza dough for the first time ever and it was crazy good. Perfectly soft and crisp. We topped it with blue cheese, sundried tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms, and onions.
[fifth]
This dinner blew my mind, simply because it was new and first time cooking doesn't always go in my favor. I found this recipe for baked fish and made it later in the evening with B. I've never cooked fish before, but wanted to try a new protein out, so I gave it a shot. I used frozen Mahi Mahi since I didn't have trout, but otherwise followed the recipe to a T (B even bought a big bag of white peppercorns :) ).
It was accompanied by rosemary bread, a wild green salad with assorted heirloom tomatoes, a wonderful white wine and followed up with homemade apple crisp and Annie Hall.
[fourth]
And so here ends that series of photos: One of my pillowcases.
Musically, I'm really liking Matt Wertz's EP "While We're Becoming" and Goldspot this week.
[three]
And so begins a series (as in two) of photos where I spontaneously snapped things that looked slightly interesting. Light switch in B's room.
B and I went to see the Oscar-nominated animated shorts and they were good. I espeically liked the new Wallace and Gromit short and laughed pretty hard at Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty. Logorama was very impressive though and worthy of the Oscar it won.
Just as entertaining as the shorts was the conversation that happened behind us before the show:
Girl: I saw Shutter Island.
Boy: Oh, how was it?
Girl: It was really great actually, I enjoyed it. I usually don't like Scorsese films.
Boy: (utter shock) You don't like Scorsese?
Girl: Nah, I don't like his lighting, characters, etc.
Boy: So you're telling me you didn't like Apocalypse Now?
Girl: Ehhh...
Boy: You didn't like Apocalypse Now?! I don't think we can be friends.
Text from B: "Apocalypse Now is Coppola"
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